WASHINGTON/LONDON, Dec 1 — The United States (US) announced a deal with the United Kingdom (UK) for zero tariffs on pharmaceutical products and medical technology on Monday, which will lead to the UK spending more on medicines.
The deal included an increase in the share of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) budget spent on medicines.
"The United States and the United Kingdom announce this negotiated outcome pricing for innovative pharmaceuticals, which will help drive investment and innovation in both countries," US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement.
The USTR Office said that the UK would increase the net price it pays for new medicines by 25 per cent under the deal. In exchange, UK-made medicines, drug ingredients, and medical technology would be exempted from so-called Section 232 sectoral tariffs.
Two sources familiar with the deal said it involved a major change to the value appraisal framework at NICE, a UK government body that determines whether new drugs are cost-effective for the NHS.
NICE's "quality-adjusted life year" measures the cost of a treatment by the number of healthy years it enables a patient, with the upper limit set at £30,000 (RM163,844) per year.
US President Donald Trump has pressed the UK and the rest of Europe to pay more for American medicines, part of his push to bring US medicine costs more in line with those paid in other wealthy nations.
The pharmaceutical industry has criticised a challenging operating environment in the UK, and some major firms have cancelled or paused investment in the country, including AstraZeneca, the largest firm on the London Stock Exchange by market value.
One point of contention between the sector and the government has been the operation of a voluntary pricing scheme, which sees firms return a proportion of sales to the NHS.
The USTR Office said the UK had committed to a 15 per cent rebate rate in 2026.
